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7 Reasons I am Done With Politics

If you’ve been following TruthInjected for the past year or so, you will notice that I have regularly written about ideologies and social issues.

I’ll be honest, I really enjoyed it. Robust debate about why we are how we are, and what is right or wrong, has really made me think a lot about my own world view.

But politics is the worst, and I am sick of even talking about it.

Culture and society? Yes. Politics and politicians? No.

Again, if you follow TI, you will have noticed my post regularity dropping away as I have less and less to say about the most mundane topic that I can imagine writing about.

And so, as we approach the general election in September here in New Zealand, I am opting out completely. I am taking the position of political agnosticism, if you will.

I know, what could be more snore-inducing than the politics of a little country in the South Pacific that you have probably never heard of. Or if you have, it is probably in connection to bungee-jumping the Lord of the Rings, or something to do with a sheep joke.

Don’t worry, I’ll stick to general themes as much as I can. Here’s why I’m not doing politics anymore:

1. Politics is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff

Andrew Breitbart was the first to say that politics is downstream from culture, and he was absolutely right.

What that means is that if you have a crappy culture, your politics will be continually trying to fight that crappy culture. And they will get crappy results.

Politicians are basically mechanics in suits – they want the culture to be broken so that they have a job. If your car is running well, you don’t need to get it fixed. Except politics plays on the level of people’s quality of life, and the rust-bucket of a car that hasn’t been fixed properly is society.

Even aside from whether they are motivated to make their countries better places, it isn’t their job. The government isn’t there to make your life a success and society a great place – it is everyone’s job. But they have gladly accepted the role because of how willingly people abdicate their personal responsibility.

And the more broken society is, the more justification they have to expand government.

2. All parties want more power

I am of the firm belief that the government is not responsible for my success or failure.

Reading through national news article comments, as I am wont to do when I am feeling particularly masochistic, I can see that this is not a view that is widely held by my compatriots.

To borrow a quote from Ben Shapiro, the government’s job is to ensure my freedom from others. By that, I mean the government’s job is to ensure national and international security for its citizens, in the form of military defense and policing – ensuring the security of my life, liberty and property.

And maybe building roads.

It is not the head of state’s fault if I wake up one day lying in a gutter, uneducated and unemployed, with a syringe sticking out of my arm.

Remember, the freedom that people exercise when they decide not to better themselves is the same freedom that the child who was raised in poverty, and now practices as a surgeon used. They are both sides of the same coin, and the difference is individual responsibility.

Just make space for people to flourish – ensure their liberty, and don’t get in the way of their progress.

And so with that in mind, I set out to research which of the dozen-or-so political parties here in NZ also believe in smaller government and individual responsibility. Sadly, I didn’t find a single one. They all want a slice of people’s soul to use as currency to push their own religion.

Yes…

3. It’s a religion

Politics is the modern religion, and your faith is the party that you support. Voters cast their ballots as symbolic prayers to the bespectacled god of their choosing, who has promised to make their life better. How kind!

And being the paragons of trust and integrity that they are, they always follow through on their campaign promises, right?

Political regimes and organized religions are the only systems under which people justify violence against their fellow man by dehumanizing them, and they both draw support by making people feel as though they are “part of something”. If we could stop “us vs them” politics, we would all be part of something much better.

4. Politics turns good people into shitty people

Like I said, commentating on politics was fun, but it began to get draining around the turn of the year – about the time that the US election and riotous aftermath was going on.

Why would that be? This is the time where the online community should be buzzing with the most diverse range of ideas, and debates should be popping up on every news article comment section and every social media post, regardless of if the original topic was related to politics or not.

But that isn’t what happened.

People were slinging shit over the fence at those who disagreed, calling them Nazi’s, misogynists, racists, communists and cucks. There really wasn’t a lot of productive debate happening – just a lot of angst and name-calling.

Now, I’m not here to say that people shouldn’t do that. I have no issue with what people choose to say online or offline.

But what are we achieving? By Facebook-blocking those with differing political opinions to ourselves, are we really making progress as a species? Are we really getting any closer to making the world a better place by smashing shop windows because the guy who gets to sit behind the shiny desk isn’t the one that we backed?

5. There is no candidate that represents me

Putting everything above aside, let’s say I decided to waste a sunny, spring afternoon queuing at a polling booth in September. Who would I like to see lead the country?

I’ve researched extensively and pondered long and hard about this.

None of them.

The choice of candidates in our election cluster around the extremes of the shitty personality spectrum.

They are generally either meek cowards who will do whatever they are told in order to form a government, or they are unstable, ideological nut-bars who would herald in cultural apartheid, hamstring technological progression, or spend so much on feel-good projects that the economy would collapse under the weight of legislated stupidity, should they ever get a whiff of power.

Without a stable leadership character in any of the parties, there is no way that I would support any of them, even if I did decide to disregard everything above and vote.

6. It really doesn’t matter

I have spoken to a lot of people that I know in the US since the election last year, and the inauguration of Trump earlier this year. I asked them all one question:

How much has your day-to-day life been affected by the result of the election?

The unanimous answer was little to none. Remember this was a swing from one party to the other, and the sky didn’t fall.

Of the people I spoke to, barely anyone noticed any change to their lives, for better or worse.

So why was it considered such a major event?

7. It’s boring as shit

Let’s face it, politics itself is about as exciting as a feature-length documentary on the origins of scrimshaw and its effects on art and culture.